The invention relates, in general, to an amusement ride.
Nothing in the following discussion of the state of the art is to be construed as an admission of prior art.
In the field of amusement rides, there are two different concepts for moving a vehicle that carries one or more passengers along a structure. On the one hand, roller coasters are known, which provide their entertainment to the passengers by extreme shapes of the track, for example loops or helices. Alternatively, vertical towers are known, which take their entertainment from lifting the vehicle vertically upwards to an elevated position and letting the vehicle drop vertically along a set length along the structure thereby simulating a “free fall”. Such a tower is known, for example, from U.S. Pat. No. 5,628,690. A combination of a roller coaster course with a free fall tower is known from published U.S. Pat. Appl. No. 2002/0103033 A1.
For connecting the passenger vehicle of a tower with a counterweight, U.S. Pat. No. 5,628,690 describes to run a cable along the entire length of the track, i.e. from an initial loading position at the ground base to the very top of the tower and to run the cable over a series of guide wheels of a guide mechanism situated at the top of the tower. The counterweight connected to the end of the cable is arranged to run up and down inside the tower. This design leads to a cable length that is approximately of a same length as the length of the track that the vehicle runs along.
It would be desirable and advantageous to provide an improved amusement ride to obviate prior art shortcomings.